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Task 1

1) Karina Chapa gave a speech at TEDxMcAllen about the revolutionary power of bilingualism and how bilingual education can change the world. 2) She noted that while over 5 million students in America speak a non-English language at home, only 20% of Americans are bilingual. 3) Karina explained that being bilingual represents having two "icebergs" in the brain that are interconnected, allowing easy switching between the two languages at both a social and cognitive level.

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212 views

Task 1

1) Karina Chapa gave a speech at TEDxMcAllen about the revolutionary power of bilingualism and how bilingual education can change the world. 2) She noted that while over 5 million students in America speak a non-English language at home, only 20% of Americans are bilingual. 3) Karina explained that being bilingual represents having two "icebergs" in the brain that are interconnected, allowing easy switching between the two languages at both a social and cognitive level.

Uploaded by

Fira 12
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Name: Safira (2229081034)

The Revolutionary Power of Bilingualism


A speech by Karina Chapa in TEDxMcAllen
First of all, Karina Chapa is a director of Language Proficiency, Biliteracy, and
Cultural Diversity in South Texas. She is one of the speakers at TEDxMcAllen who
discussed about the power of bilingualism and how the ability of bilingualism can
revolutionize education for the students around the world. Karina’s opening speech
mentioned that in America, more than 5 million students speak a non-English language at
home, but despite the diversity of language in America, only 20% of people are bilingual and
50% of people in the world are bilingual. It is happened because some of major factors, one
of the factors is the lack of understanding of language along communication process. The
others factor is historical trauma.
Talking about bilingual, Karina also quoted the theory of language. She said language
is an iceberg. She explained that there are two points of view of an iceberg. The tip and under
the iceberg. The tip describes social language, if the people always gathered with other
people with the language used, the language can be developed very quickly and being
fluently at the social level. The under iceberg has a deeper percentage that the tip means the
understanding of cognitive academic language of thinking. It spends longer to develop the
language critical thinking in people’s brain.
On the other hand, bilingual represents a double iceberg. She said that the double
iceberg is having a different shape on the tip but interconnected iceberg in the below. It
describes that people in bilingual brain is having two different languages in the same time.
They can fluently switch from one language toother language that they mastered. The people
with bilingual can directly transfer the context from the first language to their second
language.
Karina also mentioned in her speech about why any students are not allowed to
develop the cognitive thinking in their first language? A decades ago, many students in
America got punished for not talking in English. This is one of the examples of the major
factors that Karina explained before. It is historical trauma. The trauma that students got from
long time ago, makes they taught of English is so much better than their native language.
Language supposed to be their identity but the trauma effects their mentality of cognitive
thinking lately. It is very sad sometimes, the students taught if they want to be a successful
they need to mastered only in English and accept their native language is not valuable. So,
how to handle this kind of situation? The solution must be come from the students itself.
They should fight any condition about the bilingual problem, must feel empowered for who
they are and who they will became. They should be proud of their native language.
Even the researcher determined that there are many beneficial from having a bilingual
brain, those are cognitive flexibility, creative thinking and better problem-skill skill. Karina
shorted the idea that bilingual brain is a stronger, better, faster and healthier brain. It is
because bilingual people used to see many things form different perspective. Bilingual people
also can avoid any brain disease like Alzheimer and Dementia. Karina closed the speech with
a powerful sentence, it is “All of people have the opportunity to develop a whole new
generation of adults who not only bilingual but by literal bicultural by choice, the choice of
continue educating children monolingual or to give them the advantages of bilingual
education because I believe education can change the world but bilingual education can
revolutionize this world”.

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